MY DEAR MORRITT,--I am arrived from a little tour in the west of Scotland, and had hoped, in compliance with your kind wish, to have indulged myself with a skip over the Border as far as Rokeby, about the end of this month. But my fate denies me this pleasure; for, in consequence of one or two blunders, during my absence, in executing my new premises, I perceive the necessity of remaining at the helm while they are going on. Our masons, though excellent workmen, are too little accustomed to the gimcracks of their art, to be trusted with the execution of a _bravura_ plan, without constant inspection. Besides, the said laborers lay me under the necessity {p.178} of laboring a little myself; and I find I can no longer with impunity undertake to make one week's hard work supply the omissions of a fortnight's idleness. Like you, I have abridged my creature-comforts,--as Old Mortality would call them,--renouncing beer and ale on all ordinary occasions; also pastry, fruit, etc., and all that tends to acidity. These are awkward warnings; but _sat est vixisse_. To have lived respected and regarded by some of the best men in our age is enough for an individual like me; the rest must be as God wills, and when He wills. The poor-laws, into which you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan's Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart-loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical remedies, such as general systems of education, and so forth. But a man with a broken constitution might as well put faith in Spilsbury or Godbold. It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is productive of real benefit. To say that the Scottish peasant is less likely than the Englishman to become an incumbrance on his parish, is saying, in other words, that this country is less populous,--that there are fewer villages and towns,--that the agricultural classes, from the landed proprietor down to the cottager, are individually more knit and cemented together;--above all, that the Scotch peasant has harder habits of life, and can endure from his infancy a worse fare and lodging than your parish almshouses offer.--There is a terrible evil in England to which we are strangers,--the number, to wit, of tippling-houses, where the laborer, as a matter of course, spends the overplus of his earnings. In Scotland there are few; and the Justices are commendably inexorable in rejecting all application for licenses where {p.179} there appears no public necessity for granting them. A man,